Berkeley Lab’s Nuclear Science Division (NSD) has been hosting an annual Nuclear Science Day for Scouts for over a decade (with a break and a virtual version during the pandemic). Participants from various scouting organizations come to the Lab on a Saturday to do the activities required for the BSA Nuclear Science Merit Badge and the Girl Scout Get To Know Nuclear Patch. Scouts from other scouting organizations can attend as well; this year, a troop of Sea Scouts attended. This year all troops were from the greater Bay Area (in past years sometimes troops from Southern California attended).
Prior to the event, the scouts needed to complete a workbook to learn some background about nuclear science. Then, the day of the event started off with two lectures in the Berkeley Lab auditorium. The first was an introduction to nuclear science. The second one covered the year’s chosen subject, which this year was “Quantum mechanics and connections to nuclear physics.”
After the lectures the scouts split into six groups for a rotation of different activities:
- Building a simple electroscope
- A career panel where they learned from different people working in nuclear science related jobs
- Building atomic models from marshmallows and M&Ms
- Measuring radiation from household sources like Fiestaware and old radium watches, and observing cosmic rays
- A tour of the Advanced Light Source (ALS) and a detector expo
Every year NSD sets up a detector expo in a conference room near the ALS lobby. As each group of 30 scouts arrived at the ALS, they were split into two groups of about equal size. One of the two groups started their ALS tour right away and visits the detector expo after their tour, and the other groups spends 15 minutes at the detector expo before starting their ALS tour. Over all we have a total of 12 ALS tours on that day. About 270 people visited compared to 230 to 240 in past years.
“As a tour co-lead, what stood out to me was how curious and prepared the scouts were,” said Brynna Geisler-Locke, an admin in the Engineering Division. “They had so many thoughtful questions, from how we transition the software systems that support the ALS, to how we safeguard the beamlines during natural disasters (some of which even made me pause and think). It was very gratifying to see how invested the scouts already are in science!”
“It was wonderful to see the genuine curiosity from the scouts,” remarked tour guide Damian Guenzing. “You could see their excitement when they realized the scale and real-world applications of the science happening here at the ALS.”
A big thank you to everyone from the ALS who helped: Julie Drotz for making sure the tour route was safe, Ina Reichel for organizing the ALS part of the day and being the liaison to NSD, and all our tour guides: Jared de Chant, Elina Dluger Rios, Brynna Geisler-Locke, Ryan Evenson, Damian Guenzing, Ian Lacey, and Andreas Scholl.